‘The Dark Tower’ To Rise Again. Eventually.

Production on Ron Howard's adaptation of the hit Stephen King series was shut down completely, now merely delayed.

The trials and tribulations of Ron Howard's ambitious production of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, which intends to take the form of three movies and two television mini-series, calls to mind a scene from Monty Python & The Holy Grail, in which The King of Swamp Castle defended his poorly chosen building location: "When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up."

Yes, after sinking into its own swamp last weekend, when production shut down due to financial concerns, The Dark Tower is being built again, albeit slowly, later than originally planned and for a lot less money. Thanks to Deadline for the update. Universal Pictures have delayed production, which was supposed to begin this summer, all the way back to February of 2012. And even that's dependent on Howard trimming the franchise's unwieldy budget, which has yet to be disclosed, as near as we can tell. So this could still sink into the quagmire of development hell, or it could get made and make a lot of money. Or it could get made and suck intensely.

So what we're saying is… We have no idea what's going on. Ah, entertainment news. You gotta love it.

Crave Online will be back with more Dark Tower news as soon as it's actually news again. We promise.